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Norma Waterson, who has died aged 82, was the dame of a musical dynasty that played a leading function in the English folk revival of the last 60 years.

© Brian Shuel/Redferns Norma and Lal Waterson, John Harrison and Mike Waterson in Hull - Brian Shuel/Redferns

She sang throughout her childhood with her sister Lal, and and then in the family group the Watersons, with Lal, their brother Mike and cousin John Harrison. Their rich, a cappella harmonies made them the near influential song grouping of the 1960s folk revival, and they performed at festivals around the earth. Their first album Frost and Burn down (1965), described as a "calendar of ritual and magic songs", remains a classic which inspired the nascent folk scene of the day.

Later on in her career Norma Waterson recorded three solo albums, of which the offset came within a whisker of chirapsia Jarvis Cocker and his ring Pulp to the Mercury Music Prize in 1996. In 1994 she formed Waterson: Carthy, in which she was joined by her hubby and girl, Martin and Eliza Carthy.

Norma Waterson'southward voice, with its distinctive Yorkshire tones, remained potent, full-bodied and imperial into her seventies, but her real souvenir was every bit a storyteller, who seemed to become virtually possessed by the characters whose ballads and shanties she sang. In her easily, English language folk music was never twee, merely gutsy, passionate and capable of evoking the whole range of intense human being emotion from joyful ecstasy to deepest sorrow.

Her hubby once described her as an "extraordinary rest of timidity and fearlessness", an opinion to which she gave her ain typically earthy spin: "I'thousand basically a shy person," she told an interviewer. "Simply when I'm singing, I don't requite a southward--t."

© Provided past The Telegraph Lal Waterson, John Harrison, Mike and Norma Waterson in Hull - Brian Shuel/Redferns

The eldest of three children, Norma Waterson was born in Hull on August 15 1939, into a close-knit extended musical family. Her father played the guitar and piano; her mother the piano. Her Uncle Harry was adept at organ, piano, banjo and ane-cord fiddle; Uncle Sam played the musical saw; Uncle Ronnie was on the cornet at the silent pictures with the local ring; and a bevy of musical aunts sang in an all-woman end-of-the-pier ring.

Norma's mother died in the belatedly 1940s, closely followed by her begetter; the three children, Norma, her sis Lal and brother Mike, all under the age of 10, went to live with their office-Irish Gypsy grandmother who sang at informal pub sessions.

In the late 1950s, together with their cousin, John Harrison, the three children began singing in public. Initially called the Mariners and later the Folksons, they performed at the Jacaranda coffee bar in Hull. "We'd sing there three or four nights a week, get paid five bob and all the coffee nosotros could drinkable," Norma recalled.

Past the early 1960s they had settled on "the Watersons" and dropped their early skiffle material to concentrate exclusively on traditional, mainly Yorkshire folk vocal. For years they ran a guild at the Blueish Bong in Hull chosen Folk Union I, booking singers from whose repertoires they added to their own.

They made their recording debut with a track on a New Voices anthology compiled past Topic Records in 1964, and went on to record three hugely influential albums. Frost and Burn was named Best Folk Album of 1965 by Melody Maker, inspiring, among others, Steve Winwood, who adjusted the song John Barleycorn for the title track of a Traffic album. Two farther albums – The Watersons and A Yorkshire Garland – followed in 1966.

In 1968, wearied by constant touring and by now married with families, the Watersons split up. Norma had married Eddie Anderson in 1958 but, now divorced, she took off to the W Indies and talked her way into a job as a DJ at Radio Antilles in Montserrat for 4 years, while the rest of the grouping retired to a farm on the Yorkshire Moors near Robin Hood'south Bay.

© Provided by The Telegraph Norma Waterson, Martin Carthy and their girl Eliza combined once more for the Waterson:Carthy album Mutual Tongue in 1996

Mike and Lal Waterson worked together on the trailblazing contemporary album Bright Phoebus and a homesick Norma rejoined the family group in 1972, with the singer and guitarist Martin Carthy (the man who in the 1960s had inspired Bob Dylan and Paul Simon to explore folk music) replacing John Harrison. Carthy made a permanent family commitment by marrying Norma later the same year.

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Reverting predominantly to traditional vocal, the Watersons' For Pence and Spicy Ale showed that they had lost none of their free energy, passion and instinctive harmonies, and was voted folk album of the year past Melody Maker in 1975. Audio, Sound Your Instruments of Joy (1977), and Dark-green Fields (1981), all featuring Norma with Mike, Lal and Martin Carthy, followed. In 1977, Norma and Lal recorded the duo album A True Hearted Girl.

© Provided by The Telegraph Norma Waterson and her daughter Eliza Carthy performing in the Daughters Of Albion concert at the Folk Britannia festival, Barbican, London, 2006 - Tabatha Fireman/Redferns

Past this fourth dimension the musical family unit was expanding to include a new generation. Lal's girl Maria Knight sang bankroll vocals on A Truthful Hearted Girl and shortly the family grouping took on a new form with the emergence of the Waterdaughters, comprising Lal and Maria, with Norma and her teenage daughter Eliza Carthy.

In the early 1990s Norma joined forces with Martin and Eliza and began touring, first of all every bit the Carthy Family so equally Waterson:Carthy. Their first album, Waterson:Carthy, came out in 1994, followed by Mutual Natural language (1996), Broken Ground (1999), A Dark Light (2002), Fishes & Fine Xanthous Sand (2004) and Holy Heathens and the Erstwhile Green Man (2006).

© Provided by The Telegraph Norma Waterson and Eliza Carthy - Dave Peabody/Redferns/Getty Images

She was also a fellow member of the occasional folk supergroup Blue Murder, when the Waterson/Carthy clan joined forces initially with the group Swan Arcade, and later Coope, Boyes & Simpson, for an unaccompanied vocal tour de force that reached its elevation with the 2002 album No One Stands Alone.

At the same fourth dimension Norma Waterson embarked on a late-flowering career equally a solo performer, releasing three albums, Norma Waterson (1996), The Very Idea of You lot (1999) and Bright Shiny Forenoon (2000), in which she ranged from traditional folk to songs associated with Jerry Garcia, Elvis Costello, Freddie Mercury and Judy Garland.

When her first album finished a close second to Jarvis Cocker and Pulp's Different Form for the 1996 Mercury Music prize, the 57-year-erstwhile Norma Waterson was unperturbed by the unflattering portraits of her in the music press: "I felt I was flying the flag for older women," she explained. "I remember a lady from the quondam people's home circular the corner yelling: 'Good on you, Norma! Upwards the oldies!' "

© Provided by The Telegraph She had a late-flowering career as a solo artist

Her later years were overshadowed by the sudden death in 1998 of her dear younger sister Lal, followed in 2011 by that of her brother Mike. But she connected to perform, forming the Gift Band with her girl Eliza, equally they released their kickoff album equally a duo, Souvenir, in 2010. Their touring was curtailed, however, when she was struck by serious illness, which necessitated several months in hospital, her husband Martin Carthy constantly at her bedside.

Live appearances after that were few and far between, only Norma and Eliza reconvened to make one more album together – Ballast (2018), on which, with a bold selection of material ranging from a Tom Waits vocal to Kurt Weill and the nursery rhyme Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, her phonation was as compelling as e'er.

Norma Waterson was appointed MBE in 2003 and honoured for lifetime achievement at the 2016 BBC Folk Awards.

She is survived past her husband Martin and daughter Eliza and by a son, Tim, from her commencement marriage.

Norma Waterson, born August 15 1939, died January 30 2022

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